Union Budget > Budget At a Glance > Explanatory Notes

The Budget estimates are presented in this document in broad aggregates to facilitate easy understanding. For this purpose certain items of receipts and expenditure have been regrouped. For example, the expenditure of commercial departments have been taken net of their receipts so that increase in the volume of transactions does not inflate the figures on both sides. Similarly, short term loans and advances given to the States and recovered during the same year have also been netted.

The document shows the revenue deficit, the fiscal deficit and the primary deficit. Revenue deficit refers to the excess of revenue expenditure over revenue receipts. Fiscal deficit is the difference between the revenue receipts plus non-debt capital receipts and the total expenditure including loans, net of repayments. This indicates the total borrowing requirements of Government from all sources. Primary deficit is measured by fiscal deficit less interest payments.

Note: Variations, if any, in the figures shown in this document and those shown in other Budget documents are due to rounding.